Ten Years (At Last)
by lilpocketninja
Summary: Melissa McCall meets John Stilinski ten years before their love story begins.


-1-

Scott meets Stiles when they're fourteen, and that's how it starts.

Melissa and Scott are readjusting to living together again. Scott spent most of middle school with his father so that Melissa could focus on her nursing degree, but then Scott came to visit with a black eye. Scott's father surrendered sole custody the next week and Scott came home.

She worries about him starting at BHHS without any friends in town. He'd last lived here in fifth grade and she doubts anyone will remember him.  
Scott comes home the first day trailed by a tall, skinny boy on a ten-speed. Melissa stops worrying.  
When Melissa asks about Stiles' parents Stiles says that it's just him and his dad. He hands over his father's number, but the boys don't give her a reason to call it that first year. John Stilinski remains an enigma.

-2-

At fifteen, Scott and Stiles are usually up to no good. It amazes Melissa how close they are when they've really only known one another for a year. Sometimes when she comes home early and lurks around corners she catches them talking. Once she overhears Scott telling Stiles about what an asshole his father was, and how hard it was living with him. She resents Stiles, irrationally, for what Scott confides in him.

The resentment lasts until one day when Stiles shows up at the McCalls' house drunk off his ass and smelling like a distillery. He ignores Melissa when he staggers in the front door and up the stairs like he has no shame. Scott catches him before he falls down on the landing. Melissa sees red.

She asks what the hell they think they're doing. Scott won't meet her eyes and Stiles just stares insolently, so she calls John Stilinski for the first time to tell him to come pick his kid up. From what she's heard about Stilinski around town she expects him to come in furious and drag Stiles right out.

Instead, when she answers the door to his hesitant knock she finds someone red-eyed and quiet. He nods at her and she steps out of the way to let him collect Stiles off the couch. First, he wraps the kid in a hug that goes on too long and then he gently bundles him into the car. Sorry, he tells her, it's. His mom, today - If he's not allowed to come back -

She shakes her head and says that he's welcome anytime he's sober, and doesn't resent Stiles again.

-3-

Scott is a sixteen-year-old werewolf and John doesn't know. Stiles isn't a werewolf, Scott assures her, but he puts his life in danger all the time. The guilt eats at Melissa every time she sits up waiting for Scott because at least she knows there's something to wait for. In between long hours imagining her son's grisly supernatural death, she wonders which would be worse: watching your wife's slow rot or getting a call at 3AM that will change everything. Scott and Stiles don't die.

Scott heals so fast she's barely got the time to worry over his injuries. It makes her miss ninja turtle bandaids and ice cream.

Stiles bruises like a peach and bleeds like a human. A few times he comes to her, grim and pale with Scott propping him up so that he can stand, and asks her to fix him. He asks her not to tell his father. Isaac, her latest stray, stands in the doorway while she stitches his arm and gives him tips on how to hide the injuries.

The guilt of it overwhelms her, sometimes, so when she's getting off shift and John's heading in she'll buy half-dozen illicit donuts and two coffees on her way home. The stop-offs at the Sheriff's station get longer and longer until the deputies start to tease him about it, but John still wears his ring and he doesn't know. Melissa tries to be a friend.

-4-

The day after Scott turns seventeen his father shows back up. He doesn't get out of the car or come in or call Scott like a normal person; instead he parks his shitty car across the street and waits all day for Scott to come home from school. Melissa's off for the day so she spends the morning peeking out the front window and sending Tony furious texts telling him to go away. He doesn't respond to any of them and by two she's getting a little frantic because she doesn't want Scott to show up and have to deal with this.

When he texts her -_ me + isaac going over to stiles house. be home at dinner. no werewolf business_ - she wants to sob with relief. Instead she looks out the window again and evaluates her options.

Going out there with a baseball bat, while satisfying, would probably end in assault charges for her and custody for Tony. Waiting him out is intolerable. Calling John - well, it's an option, but she doesn't like it. When she left Tony she promised she would never put herself in the position of leaning on anyone that much no matter how she felt about them, and she'd kept it. She doesn't need John, but she can call the police.

She calls it in and watches outside until a patrol car rolls by. It doesn't stop and Tony doesn't budge. The car circles back around and pulls to a stop behind Tony's car.

The officer that gets out is a stranger but he orders Tony to move along and Tony listens. That night, when Stiles and John join them for cake, John squeezes her shoulder but says nothing.

-5-

Stiles tells John three weeks after he turns eighteen, then flees the house. Scott and Allison are out on a date when Stiles arrives at her doorstep, so she bundles him up into Scott's bed, waits until he falls asleep, and then heads out. On her way to the Stilinskis', she swings by the supermarket to pick up a six pack of nonalcoholic beer. They've both been trying to curb their drinking.

John spends the whole night pointedly not blaming her, but Melissa knows that it's her kid that's pulling Stiles into danger - hell, sometimes her kid is the danger - and she wallows in the guilt. Around the time that the Jack comes out, John apologizes to her. Melissa never heard the part where Stiles dragged Scott into danger, but then Scott wouldn't have told her that and Stiles would have assumed she blamed him regardless.

She wants to resent Stiles again but it's hard when his father is drunkenly leaning on Melissa's shoulder and whispering about their boys like they're a unit.

-6-

When the boys head off to college Melissa thinks she'll be seeing a lot less of John.

She's wrong: he's at the grocery store, the coffee shop, the malingering video rental place, and the middle of her morning jog. A more paranoid person might think she was being followed, but Melissa knows small towns are small towns. Besides, it's not as if she minds seeing John and getting a weekly update on Stiles' side of the dynamic duo's college insanity.

Eventually the running into one another turns into purposeful lunches together to talk. After that, they start trading off dinners and watching the Mets play on television. It makes the house seem less empty and it's been a long time since Melissa had a friend this close.

-7-

Scott's twenty and Melissa misses him. She talks to him on the phone once a week - it's a rule - and hears about his crazy college life, but she only sees him at Thanksgiving and Christmas. She tries dating again and it's mostly a disaster. At least this time none of her blind dates are psychotic werewolves. She gets some good sex out of it along with some fun stories that make John laugh himself sick, so it's not a complete wash.

When the boys come home for Thanksgiving the five of them - Melissa, Scott, Isaac, John, and Stiles - have dinner together. John's taken off his wedding band; Melissa notices the same time Stiles does. The way Stiles closes in on himself as he trips over his own feet to go to the bathroom makes her heart hurt. He returns with red eyes just as they're serving dessert.

Melissa gives him an extra large slice of pie and tells herself that she shouldn't be quite so happy about something that's making Stiles miserable.

-8-

By the time the boys hit twenty-one in a flurry of alcohol (wolfsbane-infused for Scott, according to Isaac), word about the Sheriff has gotten around town. Apparently being a well-paid, well-respected widower with a kid mostly out of the house made you a desirable target. Whenever she and John go anywhere together, Melissa gets a lot of glares and John gets a lot of flirting. They always try to hold back their laughter, but sometimes they don't make it quite out of earshot before they burst.

So it's hilarious, until it isn't. As it turns out, even werewolves can be desperately single and when they snap they snap harder than most. John goes missing in the middle of the boys' finals week. Melissa could call Scott and they would make the four hour drive in two, but she knows John will be pissed if she interrupts their studies for a little thing like saving his life.

Instead she jumps in her sensible mom car and floors it to the warehouse district so she can shove John's jacket into Derek Hale's stupid face. Derek sniffs it, looks like something has died, and jumps in the passenger seat to guide the way. He offers to go in first, but Melissa has a mountain ash bat with defensive sigils and she takes great satisfaction in knocking the loony - ha! - werewolf in the head.

If John kisses her in gratitude, well, they elect not to mention it again.

-9-

Scott's twenty-two and watching her put on makeup from the bathroom doorway. He wants to know where she's going and who she's seeing, as if the threat of a step-father is looming over his head. She tells him it's not Peter or any other werewolf, but nothing more before she demands his opinions on her makeup. As usual, he smiles and tells her she looks wonderful; he would do that even if she'd drawn stick-figures on her forehead in eyeliner.

He reminds her to be back by curfew and kisses her on the cheek as she leaves. John was going to pick her up, but it's more fun to let Scott think she was going on a real date so she drives over to his place before their agreed meeting time. Stiles answers the door, looking pale, and at first Melissa thinks that he's still not coping with his father moving on.

It's both more and less dire than that: Melissa walks into the living room to find John interrogating some poor hipster-looking kid about his intentions toward Stiles. She hides a laugh behind her clutch and winks at Stiles before pulling John out of the room. John looks worriedly over his shoulder as they get in the car; Stiles is rarely serious about the people he dates and as far as Melissa knows he's never brought anyone home. He'll live, though; Melissa dealt with too much Scott-and-Allison to be very sympathetic.

-10-

Scott proposes to Allison when he's twenty-three and she's twenty-four. Melissa is deliriously happy about this for a week until she's plunged abruptly into a world of things she has no desire to deal with.

Chris and Victoria Argent's wedding had been a perfect fairytale, judging by the pictures and Allison's stories; Allison clearly wants the same for her and Scott. Victoria isn't there to plan anything with her daughter, so of course Melissa steps up. Chris offers to pay for absolutely anything as long as Melissa does the planning and, because she still hates Chris from all those times he threatened to kill her son, she encourages Allison to splurge on _everything_.

The breakfast nook turns into a war room of bridal catalogues, fabric samples, and invitation mock-ups where Melissa and Allison meet once a week to strategize. Sometimes Scott comes in the kitchen while they're working but Allison shoos him out with cries of bad luck. Sometimes Stiles comes in to criticize their balloon color choices or mason jar centerpieces while he sulks about having to be co-best-man with Isaac. Allison is endlessly patient with him, but on days when Lydia joins the in planning she's ruthless about telling him to suck it up. That usually gets Stiles to vacate the premises, which cuts down on some of Melissa's stress.

Lydia brings her own kind of stress. She's absolutely against weddings and marriage in all forms, but she insists that if her best friend is going to make the mistake of having one then it's going to be perfect. Perfection for Lydia Martin, Melissa learns, is achieved through a mixture of domineering and insulting other peoples' tastes. Allison is still endlessly patient, though sometimes her smile starts to look a little strained. As soon as Lydia leaves she quietly dumps the majority of her notes into the trash and suggests that she and Melissa meet tomorrow instead.

Melissa must look ragged around the edges because John starts turning up at the house, too. He comes when Allison is leaving and just offers his hand. She follows him out to the car and the two of them make their escape to the sports bar - old person bar, Stiles calls it - where they can watch football and eat greasy food in peace. He listens to her rant about the girls and Scott and adds his own observations about Stiles' funk, which Melissa learns was brought on by a breakup with the hipster kid that turned out to be serious.

They spend the next six months like this, until on the day itself Melissa is vibrating with energy. She's so on edge she barely hears the ceremony, but cries when Scott and Allison kiss. John drives her to the reception hall after the wedding party pictures and gets her settled at the head table before wandering off. Later, she sees him sitting at a table with a very awkward looking Derek Hale, a serene Dr. Deaton, and Bobby Finstock of all people. When Bobby gets on a roll about Lacrosse she decides to rescue him and drag him out on the dance floor.

He dances better than she would have guessed as they move to a slow song. Lessons, he admits, before his own wedding. She gives him a half-smile and wonders if today is as difficult for him as it is for her, but his hand is resting just above the curve of her hip and it feels intimate the way they've never felt before.

What a cliche, being in love with your best friend, Melissa thinks as he twirls her. She lands back in his arms with their bodies pressed fully together this time. She can feel the warmth of him through the fabric of his suit where it brushes against her chest, and it makes her flush dark. When she looks up to meet his eyes, he's smiling, and he tilts his head toward the door.

They can't leave, not really. Stiles and Isaac's joint best man speech is either going to be perfect or a complete disaster; Melissa wouldn't miss it for the world. Still, she allows herself to be lead off the floor and through the crowds until they find the coat closet. It's a June wedding, too warm for anybody to be wearing a coat, so the place is empty and roomy, all theirs.

He kisses her and she pulls him back down for another.

"So we're doing this?" John asks. He's unsure and Melissa remembers the kiss they shared after he'd been kidnapped. It was too soon, then, but it's just right now. "For real this time?"

"Yeah." She clutches the back of his neck like he might try to escape. "Finally."

-End-


End file.
